The pope and his TV host: Should this priest not dress properly if not out of respect for the pope then out of respect for his own priesthood? Obviously, this is an 'image' that both the pope as well as the
Italian bishops' conference do not mind at all for priests!
One of my belated translations...
There must be a reason…
Why a TV show with the pope
as regular guest is a flop
Translated from
January 11, 2018
Don Filippo Di Giacomo, in the
Venerdi opinion supplement of
La Repubblica on January 5, informs us of the flop registered by the TV2000 program ‘Padre nostro’ with no less than the pope as a regular protagonist.
Pope Francis has been the protagonist of a program entitled Padre Nostro (Our Father) [One wonders which ‘father’ is meant here – il papa, or God] aired every Thursday evening since Oct. 25, 2016, on TV2000, the so-called ‘bishops’ TV’ [it is the TV network of the media conglomerate belonging to the Italian bishops’ conference]. It is hosted by don Marco Pozza, chaplain of the prison in Padua.
The program had been accompanied by a grand and lengthy publicity barrage on every possible organ of communication, from the press to radio, and don Pozza’s appearance on all the major national TV channels. But despite all that, it has attracted so few viewers as to be embarrassing.
Confirming, above all, what the TV audience data for the past 3 years have been attesting: Pope Francis on TV gets half the audience that Pope Benedict XVI had. The latter had an average audience [for his Angelus and Wednesday catechesis] of 20% of viewees, whereas his successor has been registering an audience of 9-12%. [Gee, whatever happened to the most popular man who ever walked the earth, as the media inflated his image at the start? - contributing to the impressive turnouts at St. Peter's in 2013, but which then steadily got cut in half every year since then.]
If as McLuhan famously said (the late Canadian media guru who was a practicing Catholic and was highly disapproving of microphones on the altar and had a profound disgust for ‘contemporary’ Masses), “the medium is the message”, what does it say when people tune out and switch to another program when watching a ‘talking’ cassock on TV? There must be a reason!
We too had occasion here to mention this program in connection with the minor polemics over the pope’s statements on changing the vernacular translation for the sixth invocation in the 'Our Father'
[‘and lead us not into temptation’, in English]. And now we learn that the series has been a flop, and that TV viewership of this pope in Italy is at best 9-12% when he is ‘on’. I’m not an expert on TV viewership so I cannot evaluate the real significance of these figures, but I trust in don Filippo who knows the media and whom I have always appreciated, even if we do not share the same viewpoint, for his uncommon intellectual honesty.
But setting aside technical evaluations, I think however that some reflections of a general character cannot be avoided:
1. First, I wish to make clear not just that success is
not a value in itself, nor is it even a parameter for judging the value of a person or an action. As a general principle, this is especially true for Christians: we cannot measure the holiness of a person or the validity of a pastoral action based on the popular consensus that the person enjoys or the approval that an event gets. If we were to judge on the basis of ‘success’, then Jesus and the martyrs would be listed among the list of ‘failures’ who do not deserve any credit. Rather, according to the Gospel, lack of success should be considered as a reason for beatitude: “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.”
(Lk 6, 22)
The fact that success cannot be the ultimate goal for our actions, does not mean that we should not consider the reactions (positive or negative) that our words or actions provoke in those around us and ask ourselves the reasons for those reactions.
2. But it must be said that this pontificate has made much of image. Indeed, if I remember well, one of the topics most discussed by the cardinals in preparation for the Conclave of 2013 was precisely
how to recover an image for a Church that appeared to be irremediably compromised. And from the first words and actions of the new pope it was apparent that particular importance was given to image.
Remember the mediatic resonance of the pope who went to pay his bill at the priests’ hotel in Via della Scrofa? It was about pushing the idea of a pope who behaves very much like any of us, one who would nto be ‘castled in’ at the Vatican enclosed in the papal apartments and remote from the life and problems of the common man. Of course, the whole world was ‘struck’ by this novelty. Later, given the repeitiveness – and even, shall we say, the artificiality - of some such ‘novelties’, we became used to the new course and we have since become rather skeptical and indifferent.
This new course includes those inflight news conferences, the interviews given freely to various media outlets, and lately, as we have seen, taking regular part in a TV program. Perhaps, they had not fully considered the fact that TV programs are routineley and systematically monitored to measure their audience. And the Auditel data for the pope’s program are merciless. For a pontificate that holds so much for image, the result must be, beyond any doubt, a very serious humiliation.
3. Comparisons are always unpleasant, but seeing that don Filippo brought it up, we cannot ignore what he says. It would seem that one of the biggest problems of Benedict XVI’s pontificate was its relationship with the world of information. Or, better said, it is a fact that his pontificate had a problem with the media. But we must ask who was responsible for this problem.
Public opinion
[which is shaped by none other than the media] seems never to have had a doubt as to who should be considered responsible:
the theologian pope, an intellectual who lived among his books and was incapable of speaking to the people. And now we find out that his audience ratings were twice that of his successor who is supposed to be very popular and close to the common man and his problems.
Now, should we not revisit the interpretation given to the difficult relationship between Papa Ratzinger and the media? Probably the fault for alleged ‘failure of communications’ was really with the media, and not with the pope.*
[It always was. Although they had no choice but to report actual data at the time, the media were the first to be shocked that Benedict XVI was actually drawing bigger audiences to St. Peter's than John Paul II did in his peak years. That did not, however, make them change their narrative of Benedict XVI as an unpopular pope out of touch with the faithful and isolated in his ivory tower.]
In the same way, the media are chiefty responsible for constructing the myth of the pope-everyone-likes, considering that now, it seems, he is not all that popular on TV as one might expect from the myth. But it also seems the problem is not limited to TV viewership alone. St. Peter’s Square itself has seemed to have far less crowds for the pope’s appearances. I say ‘seems’ because I am unable to verify it in person
[Fr. Scalese currently heads the resident Catholic mission in Afghanistan]; and TV is not of great help because it only shows what the program directors want you to see, and not just in this case.
The fact is in Benedict XVI’s time, TV often did not show a full view of the piazza during one of his events – so that the viewers would not see that there were far more than the proverbial ‘four cats’ that the newspapers often tried to insinuate were all that he could attract (at least then, I could check it out for myself). Now, they don’t show a full view of St. Peter’s at a Francis event in order not to show that the expected crowd for the most-popular-pope-ever is no longer there.
4. The flop for the Padre Nostro program could be explained by the fact that it is carried on TV2000, the network of the Italian bishops’ conference, which is surely not among the channels frequented by the public. But it does not mean that it doesn’t have its specialized audience – some programs, like the rosary broadcast directly from Lourdes, do get ratings far more than that of Padre Nostro.
5. Padre Nostro was a program conceived and executed according to the canons of the ‘church that goes forth’, and it has all the ingredients: the most-popular-pope-ever who allows himself to be interviewed, like any other VIP, by a ‘street priest’, actually a prison warden, who looks young and wears casual clothes
[too casual and most inappropriate] – certainly not a ‘tonaca teletrasmessa’
[TV-transmitted priest’s garb]. Yet, it looks as if it has not worked. One could say that people are not at all attracted to this kind of church, which they may perceive as even more clerical than the ‘200-years-behind’ Church [among the infamous last words of the late Cardinal Martini] that Benedict XVI was accused of leading.
6. The conclusion one reaches at the end of these considerations is that perhaps one does not need to kowtow to the world to be accepted by it.
- Perhaps it is better for the Church to remain what she has always been, the Church of always, that does not need to blend into the world.
- That the pope, in order to have people pay attention and really like him, should not feel dutybound to be on a regular TV show or to find every day something expedient for the media to report on, but simply begin to be the pope with simplicity and discretion, as popes before him have always done.
- That everyone in the Church, from the Supreme Pontiff to the least among the faithful, stop mimicking the world and say what is thought to be ‘pleasing’ to people, but go back to saying and doing only what Christ said we ought to be doing as the Church has always taught.
*
P.S. On how the media treated Benedict XVI: As someone who gladly made it my concern to follow closely as much as I could of whatever was reported or commented about Benedict XVI in the media, I must say that Fr. Scalese makes too sweeping a generalization.
There were two major spans of time (several months we are talking here) when media hostility was marked and highly gratuitous:
First, the 2009-2010 spell when somehow the very man who had been responsible for first meeting the sexual abuse issue head-on on in the Church and getting something done about it was suddenly targeted in every possible way as being himself directly or indirectly responsible for major cover-ups if not for personal involvement in such scandals himself.
That came to nothing, of course, because there was nothing behind the campaign but outright animosity that prompted the major news outlets on the planet – the AP, the New York Times and the Der Spiegel group of Germany – to put all their resources into trying to discredit Ratzinger on this account, with the ulterior motive of forcing him to resign as pope.
The second was the Vatileaks ‘scandal’, largely manufactured and then hyper-inflated, based on pilfered documents that did not show a single 'scandal' the media considered worth investigating themselves, though they made it seem that Vatileaks was the largest scandal that had ever hit the Vatican. And the Conclave cardinals simply bought into this media image which became their pretext for making Curial reform the priority problem they saw for the Church and for the new pope they were to elect!
In between, of course, there were minor spells involving a few weeks of media furor in a short list that B16 hounds like John Allen and Marco Politi loved to repeat:
– The Regensburg lecture which media bias reduced to nothing but a citation the pope made from the last Byzantine emperor who, in the 15th century, was able to criticize Mohammed and Islam to his Muslim interlocutor during the Turkish Ottoman siege that preceded the fall of Byzantium;
- The appointment of Mons. Wielgus to be Archbishop of Warsaw when it turned out he was a documented spy for the secret service of the Polish Communist regime; and
- Lifting the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops, one of whom, Mons. Williamson, was shown to be a habitual Holocaust denier.
Benedict XVI took full responsibility for Regensburg without taking back anything of what he said, instead underscoring that the citation illustrated the point he was making about truth in dialog. And the Wielgus and Williamson fiascos were both failures of the Vatican bureaucracy responsible for thoroughly vetting candidate bishops and yes, anyone involved in a major high-profile papal lifting of excommunication (not that it would have stopped the pope from lifting the excommunication but that the proper explanations would have been made beforehand, namely, that as deplorable as Williamson’s Holocaust negationism is, it had absolutely nothing to do with why he was excommunicated to begin with, and why his excommunication ought not to be lifted along with the 3 other Lefebvrian bishops).
It appears Fr Scalese posted a new article around the time I was posting the above. His title for it is 'Chi comanda in Vaticano?' which I think is a superfluous rhetorical question, so I have replaced it with something that makes the burden of his article clear - to underscore the contradiction between this pope's words against abortion and his actions...
It has been four days, after all, since the news came out that some time before Christmas, the Vatican had conferred the honor of Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great on Holland's leading advocate of abortion and LGBT rights. But the Vatican has yet to explain how and why this could have happened, much less withdrawn the conferment for the great mistake that it is. It's as if the Holy See has lost all sense of shame about its blatant anti-Catholicism under this pope...
When actions speak louder than words
Translated from
January 15, 2018
Readers who follow me regularly would have noted that in my articles I rarely refer to Amoris Laetitia, for reasons that I explained soon after its publication in my post on April 14, 2016. It is the same reason that I courteously declined when, last August, the promoters of the Correctio Filialis asked me if I wished to sign the document. My thinking is:
who am I to correct the Holy Father, and how can I judge the orthodoxy of his intervention? [I find this a rare and puzzling disingenuousness in Fr. Scalese, who has certainly expressed himself strongly on many other occasions against statements or actions by Bergoglio that he disapproves of because they would seem to contradict what the Church teaches (i.e., orthodoxy). In any case, I looked back to the April 2016 post – which I will post after this – and see that it consisted of 10 questions Fr. Scalese raises as initial points to reflect upon about AL. Framed as questions, they obviously did not indicate approval but rather the confusion generated by the document.]
But that did not deter me then nor does it now deter me from harboring serious doubts on AL, nor to underscore the ambiguity of the language used therein, nor to denounce the procedural defects evident in its drafting, nor from taking note of the consequences it has provoked, particularly the confusion it has spread in the Church and the divisions among cardinals, bishops, priests and the faithful.
Since then, too, a most disputable interpretation of AL has been declared by the pope himself in writing as ‘the only possible interpretation’ of AL and has been formally elevated to the rank of ‘authentic magisterium’, so I am even more dumbstruck, not because my doubts have been dissipated, but simply because
I no longer know what to think [This final phrase, I take it, is simply an empty colloquialism because Fr. Scalese certainly knows exactly what he thinks on any subject he decides to write on!]
But there is another magisterium, to which I do not feel bound in any way, and which I consider it absolutely legitimate to judgee – we can call it the magisterium of gestures. One does not communicate only with words; one also communicates through signs. And gestures are usually more eloquent and incisive than words, even if, when taken by themselves alone, they can be polyvalent, i.e., they can communicate various messages.
Let us take the example of a kiss: a baby’s kiss for the mother is an expression of love, while Judas’s kiss was the immediate sign of his betrayal of Jesus. That is why words are necessary to explain the real value of a gesture. Baptism, for instance, to distinguish it from anuy other ‘washing’, must be accompanied by the sacramental words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. But the opposite can also be true: that
words are ambiguous but gestures are unequivocal. This is exactly the situation we are now living in the Church.
Pope Francis does not like to speak about ethical questions. He explained his reason a few months after his election, in the interview he gave to
La Civilta Cattolica in September 2013:
We cannot always insist on speaking about abortion, homosexual ‘marriage’ and the use of artificial contraceptives. This is not possible. [Of course, it is! Not just possible but obligatory. Catholics – the pope first of all - ought to speak about these issues and affirm/reaffirm/defend the Catholic position whenever and however the opportunity arises.] I have not spoken much about these issues, and I have been criticized for it. But when speaks about them, it must be in a context. [Precisely. The context being whenever the issue is raised to question or to actively oppose Catholic teaching!] Besides, everyone knows what the position of the Church is. [Not everyone – casual Catholics have to be reminded now and again; and, worse, not anymore, since you have made even the idea of sin itself subjective, with this notion of open-ended ‘discernment’ in which you leave it to the sinner to ‘discern’ whether he is in a state of sin – i.e., whether he is sinning by chronic adultery, for example, in the case of RCDs – because if he ‘discerns’ otherwise, then he thinks he is in a state of grace that qualifies him to receive communion! But it goes even farther back to your acknowledgment to Scalfari of the ‘primacy of the individual conscience’ to determine what is good or bad – i.e., you are saying that determination of good or bad, and therefore of sin, is now entirely subjective, and has nothing to do with absolute norms such as the Commandments of God. Which means, as Eugenio Scalfari rightly concluded – and this was more than a year before AL was published - means - you have effectively abolished the idea of sin. And all your rigmarole about ostentatiously going to confession yourself and ostentatiously giving confession to others is a big sham! If I can decide for myself that I have committed ‘no sin’ even if I may have violated all the Ten Commandments one by one, who needs confession?] I am a son of the Church and it is not necessary to keep talking about these issues... [Bergoglio uses that formulation 'I am a son of the Church' as if affirming that would make right anything erroneous he has said (he said this first about homosexuals and their lifestyle, when he told journalists to go look up themselves what the Catechism says about homosexual practices, when he very simply could have said, in fewer words than his admonition, "Homosexual practices are sinful, and homosexuals are obliged to live chastely", which obviously this 'son of the Church' was not prepared to say, or the whole world would have jumped at him. Instead, he chose to say, "Who am I to judge...?" and instantly, he was Man of the Year for all the gay publications and associations throughout the world.]
Teachings, whether about doctrine or about morality, are not all equivalent. Missionary ministry is not obsessed about the disarticulated transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be imposed with insistence. Missionary announcement concentrates on the essential, on the necessary – what excites and attracts most about Jesus and his Gospel, that which makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples on the road to Emmaus. So we must find a new equilibrium - otherwise the moral edifice of the Church would collapse like a house of cards, and we risk losing the freshness and perfume of the Gospel. [Really by reaffirming Church teaching against abortion and sins against chastity and contraception???] Our evangelical propositions must be more simple but also more profound and more enlightening (because) moral consequences derive from these propositions.
One could not agree more with the second paragraph.
Except that… in the past five years, I must have missed the missionary pronouncements concentrated on the essential. Perhaps I was distracted. But what I have perceived so far is that the insistence, perhaps obsessive, on certain topics (abortion, gay unions, artificial contraception) has been replaced by the insistence, no less obsessive, on other topics
[migration and indiscriminate embrace of Islam, climate change, world poverty, ‘an economy that kills’].
But, leaving aside this inconsistency that only the blind would deny, it must be said that every time Papa Bergoglio has spoken about abortion
[Let’s see – one can count the occasions on the fingers of one hand!], he has never failed to express a clear condemnation.
[Right, what I have long since called his pro forma denunciations of abortion, occasions when it would really be far-out weird if he failed to say the words – when there’s a March to Life that stops right outside his Angelus window on a Sunday, or the pro-life movement in the USA asks for a message for their annual Walk for Life... For an example of his latest pro forma denunciations of abortion, see here: catholicnewslive.com/story/655574]
Therefore, the problem is not that he has failed to say the right words
[when he has to!]. The problem arises when one goes form his words to his actions.
In recent days, we learned of the conferment of the Cross of the Order of St Gregory the Great on Lilianne Ploumen, who has been a cabinet minister int eh Netherlands, and who is an open supporter of abortion and LGBT ‘rights’…
Such a gesture outweighs a thousands words from the pope and is more eloquent than multiple addresses or statements – in one moment, it sweeps away any declaration the pope may have made about support for unborn life.
Yet it is not the first case of such a gesture. It must be added to a long series of analogous situations, which
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana reminds us of : from the pope’s choice of atheist Eugenio Scalfari as his favored if not exclusive interlocutor, to calling Emma Bonino one of Italy’s ‘contemporary greats’, to nominating abortionists and abortion supporters to his completely overhauled Pontifical Academy for Life, to the Vatican invitations to leading population control advocates to take part in a
[never-ending, it seems] series of environmentalist symposiums organized the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and of Social Sciences.
All these instances are unequivocal gestures sending out a clear message:
The principles that up till March 13, 2013, had been sustained, promoted and defended b the Catholic Church in ethical matters, although they have not been expressly retracted, are in fact considered de facto obsolete, in favor of being in line with the dominant worldview.
These gestures do not simply serve to increase the confusion in the Church – but they cause disconcertment, indignation and scandal among the faithful who have always believed that among so many opinable questions, there are some principles that are absolutely non-negotiable, such as the sacredness of human life [‘from conception to its natural end’].
[But Bergoglio has explicitly said that "there are no non-negotiable principles", consistent, of course, with his moral relativism.]
In the face of actions like the honor given to Ploumen, one must ask what value system does the Holy See currently hold as a reference? Is it still the Commandments of God, or has the latter been replaced by the dominant ideology? One must ask whether ‘the church’ under Bergoglio can still be considered the authentic interpreter of the Gospel, or has it now become just another ‘section’ of the United Nations?
But above all, one must also ask: Who really rules at the Vatican today?
[Can there be any question about that? From THE DICTATOR POPE to John Allen’s recent article expressing wondrous admiration that this pope seems to know everything that is taking place and spoken about at the Vatican, one cannot say that anyone else but Bergoglio reigns, rules and dictates!]
P.S.
UPDATE! And the Vatican reaction is worse than I had imagined!
After 4 days, the Vatican
'explains' the honor to Ploumen
but appears to simply shrug it off
Apparently, they see nothing wrong with it
by Steve Skojec
January 16, 2018
[Skojec first recaps the story of the Vatican honor conferred on Ploumen...]
...The Vatican, meanwhile, maintained a stony silence about the whole affair, until, after the combined pressure from the reporting of The Lepanto Institute and OnePeterFive (and the outlets that subsequently picked up on the story) pushed the Vatican into issuing a terse statement. More on that statement in a second.
I would first like to note something I find petty, unprofessional, and frankly juvenile in all of this. (Sadly, however, not at all surprising.) I wrote to Greg Burke, the American who now serves as the Director of the Holy See Press Office, last Saturday evening, a day after our first report came out. I wrote:
Dear Greg,
This story is, for obvious reasons, controversial:
onepeterfive.com/pope-francis-awards-architect-safe-abortion-fund-pontifica...
We’d very much like to get a statement from the Vatican on whether the pope knew she was being given this award, and why. And if she did not receive it from the Vatican but purchased it second-hand, that’d be good to know as well.
We’re eager to publish a story correcting any part of this we’ve gotten wrong. It’d be awful to think a woman with such significant pro-abortion credentials would receive a papal decoration.
Pretty straightforward, right? A chance to clear the air. To deliver the information about what really happened to the audience most concerned about it. To show that in this case at least, the Vatican was the good guy.
But I received no response. Now, I know that people in the Vatican read us here, and they’re almost certainly not fans of our criticism. But I’ve interacted with Greg before when he wanted a story corrected, so it’s not as though he’s above a gruff reply when the situation warrants. Not in this case, though. Nothing.
And yet yesterday, when I got home from an evening visiting friends, I saw a brand-new story from the
National Catholic Register (which, to my knowledge, hadn’t done anything with this story at all before last night) saying that the Vatican had issued a statement:
[It is a 'puzzlement' that hardly anyone picked up the story - and it is shocking that the Register only chimed in with the Vatican explanation. Is Edward Pentin on vacation? Hard to think he would have ignored the original story!]
“The honor of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great received by Mrs. Lilianne Ploumen, former Minister of Development, in June 2017 during the visit of the Dutch Royals to the Holy Father, responds to the diplomatic practice of the exchange of honors between delegations on the occasion of official visits by Heads of State or Government in the Vatican.
Therefore, it is not in the slightest a placet [an expression of assent] to the politics in favor of abortion and of birth control that Mrs Ploumen promotes.”
[The Vatican explanation demeans the Order of St. Gregory immeasurably. They should say Masses in reparation for this offense to the pope-saint for thus demeaning his name, as well. Is membership in the Order now being handed out to the pope's visitors as they do a formal blessing on parchment signed by the pope to visitors whose embassies are thoughtful enough to ask the Vatican for one? I have one from the first time I was privileged to meet John Paul II at the Vatican.]
Curious, I checked my email again to see if I’d missed something. Nothing there. I went to the Holy See Press Office website. Zilch. I finally fired off a message to a contact in Rome, who told me that to their knowledge,
the statement was sent directly to journalists who had expressed interest in the story, and was to be found nowhere else. [In other words, Burke thought the explanation was not even worth posting on the Vatican's daily news bulletin! Of course, Burke gets his marching orders from someone above him.]
That’s funny. I’m pretty sure my email to Greg Burke and the two full reports on that matter that appeared here constituted “interest in the story.”
But of course, “Shadowbanning” is all the rage these days, and the Vatican communications apparatus — playground bully that it is — appears to be simply ignoring me. If that is in fact the case, I interpret it as a sign that a) There was no reason to hurry to update the story with the statement and b) There is no reason to view the statement as a sign of good faith intended to set the record straight, but simple CYA.
Frankly, from a PR standpoint, it’s a terrible statement. It only acknowledges what we had already reported — that Ploumen received the award as part of a group — while making an anemic excuse about how it doesn’t mean what it looks like it means.
Meanwhile, it does nothing to answer any of the following questions:
- Why was no vetting process applied to the distribution of these awards?
- Why was a 186-year-old papal decoration created to bestow a supreme honor on those who have served the Church well being given out like a commemorative Vatican snow globe or a pope pencil in a VIP visitor goody bag?
- Why was there no statement condemning or distancing the Vatican from Ploumen’s public comments in which she says she was awarded a “prize” by a Vatican that probably knew what she was about in confirmation of her work?
- Why was there no expression of remorse that an award was given to one of the most effective single promoters of abortion in the world today?
- Why was the award not recalled?
- If the award could not be recalled without creating a diplomatic crisis, why was there nothing in the statement encouraging Ploumen to voluntarily return it, or at the very least stop using it to mislead people into thinking the pope was rubber stamping her agenda?
The statement, if it can be characterized simply, does only two things:
- it tells the world that the award itself is now meaningless, so no big deal; and
- it expresses that the Vatican is really annoyed that those meddling kids were asking questions about it at all, and how dare they think there should be some connection between actual Catholic values and the bestowal of a papal award?!
It is yet another in a long line of communications failures from the Vatican. I’d think with the billion euros they’ve got tucked away under the mattresses, they could hire a competent staff of professionals. But I suppose until they can find a pope who acts like a Catholic, I should keep my expectations low.
Meanwhile, many of the faithful who heard the story went from open disbelief (“How can something this bad possibly be true?”) to excuse-making (“The pope couldn’t possibly have known!”) to, after the Vatican statement, saying, “See? It really wasn’t a big deal after all!”
Well, it was true, and it is a big deal, but as to whether the pope knew? That’s something worthy of addressing briefly here.
I think, in a way, it’s almost immaterial whether he knew about this or not. He has intentionally surrounded himself with corrupt and craven men. They are, by and large, lazy and vicious and self-serving — and simply don’t care about doing what is right.
And so, when a thing like this comes to light, the Vatican, rather than expressing the appropriate horror and concern, essentially acts indignant that they were called out at all. The attitude seems to be, “Who do you think YOU are to ask questions, peon?”
Only that’s not how things work anymore, and they don’t control the message. One of these days, they’re going to figure that out. Not answering emails isn’t going to stop me or any other Catholic writer from actively pursuing these stories. It is, however, going to encourage us to think they’re being underhanded. There’s an old and obvious rule of thumb: If you don’t want people to think you’re doing something wrong, don’t act like you have something to hide. Pretty basic.
The pope, of course, is nowhere to be found in any of this. No indication of regret from the papal plane, where he’s too busy joking with reporters he doesn’t go to a doctor for his health, but to a witch. (No, I’m not making that up.)
[No reporter on the papal plane asked him about the Ploumen case??? Or were they instructed by Greg Burke not to bring it up at all?] No assertion that he will ensure the Vatican will be more diligent. No moral outrage that a woman who raised $300 million for abortion in 6 months is claiming he supports her work.
Complete. Radio. Silence.
Even if the pope were not actively, undeniably engaged almost daily in the deconstruction of the entire body of Catholic moral teaching, his silence in the face of scandal after scandal would tell the faithful that he’s perfectly fine with everything that’s happening. Pope Honorius, frankly, was anathematized for less.
Pope Felix III told us exactly what to think about this kind of behavior:
“An error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of secret complicity.”
Not a day goes by that we do not get new proof of this pope's moral emptiness!
Before I saw Skojec's new article, I was going to add the following commentary on the Ploumen case from a Busso editorialist.
Abortionist honored by the Vatican?
What game is being played here?
by Tommasso Scandroglio
Translated from
January 15, 2018
[After reprising the original news report from Lepanto Institute, with the relevant research it had done on Ploumen, he gos on to say this:]
One must ask how this person can be called Catholic. The question was asked of her when the
New York Times interviewed her in February 2017 after President Trump revived George W. Bush’s ban on American aid to any international organizations that discuss abortion as an option with their clients. She replied:
“Some people think that when you are Catholic, you can only do what you are told to do [by the Church]. But to be Catholic simply means to form your own conscience via certain norms and rules. [Norms and rules which are those of the world, not of Catholicism, certainly not the Ten Commandments!] My mother always taught me that my conscience should be my touchstone for reference”. [Spoken like a true Bergoglian!]
But beyond Ploumen’s self-certification as a Catholic, what is scandalous, obviously, is that the Holy See should confer such an honor on a manifest sinner – to use an expression from the Code of Canon Law – who has been actively and tenaciously fighting against some of the non-negotiable principles defended by the Church, presenting herself de facto, and even de jure, as an enemy of the Catholic Church and certainly not as a paladin of the faith.
This honor to Ploumen proves
[not that we need any more proof!] that outside
[AND INSIDE!] the Holy See, there are very well-placed persons in influential circles who support homosexualism and abortism. Who think with total conviction that homosexuality, gender theory and abortion – not to mention other noxious social phenomena – are good for man, good for Christians and good for all of human society.
The excuse of doctrinal confusion can no longer be used. On the contrary, we are dealing here with persons who consciously and deliberately act on the side of evil and who are therefore working in bad faith. Dialog, ‘mercy’, inclusion, pontifical engineering – namely, the Bergoglian ministry completely bent on laying down bridges anywhere and with anyone – are, in this case, nothing but a smokescreen to hide the Vatican’s promotion of policies that are in clear opposition to Catholic doctrine, to the teachings of Christ, and to the true good of man.
The Marco Pannellas, Emma Boninos, Scalfaris, Jeffrey Sachses, Von Boeselagers (the Knights of Malta Chancellor who promoted the use of condoms in some Asian countries), the Biggars and Le Blancs (scientists who are new members of the Pontifical Academy for Life(PAV) and who openly promote abortion, euthanasia and artificial reproduction), the Chiodis (the latter also a member of the PAV, in favor of artificial reproduction and contraception in his ridiculous re-reading of Humanae Vitae in the light of AL), and the Ploumens of the world
not only should not be receiving honors, appointments and attestations of esteem from the Vatican, but ought to be severely condemned for what they do.
This would be of extreme service for the salvation of their souls and for the good of the souls of ‘simple’ folk. It would be helping out a hand to them so that they do not fall into the abyss, and to keep others from falling.
But to give them a pontifical honor – besides insulting all those who have truly merited theirs – does not just mean besmirching the prestige of the Order of St Gregory the Great, but also prostituting the Church’s faith and morals. And not the least, scandalizing not a few Catholics!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2018 05:13]